No sooner have reasonable provisions been made to establish retiring and disability allowances for academic Retiring Allowances officers, and stipends for advanced stuand Fellowship dents whose work needs and deserves Stipends support, than changed economic conditions enter to disarrange the whole scheme which has been so carefully worked out. When a system of retiring and disability allowances was first established by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the maximum annual payment was fixed at $4,000 and afterwards reduced to $3,600. For a man who had been in receipt of an annual salary of $5,000, $6,000 or even $7,500, the maximum named was not an unsuitable allowance. The situation, however, is quite different in the case of an academic officer who while in active service receives the compensation of $10,000, $12,000, or $15,000. It is quite impossible for such a man late in life to readjust his whole scale of living so as to enable him to pass his days in comfort on an income of $3,600. Therefore, either some way must be found to increase the maximum allowance to academic officers of this type, or they must themselves anticipate the situation which changed conditions will create, and of their own motion and by their own thrift apply some part of the larger salary received while in active service to making increased provision for later years. The Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America offers a most inviting opportunity to do this at low cost. The universities themselves cannot undertake to increase the maximum retiring allowances without entering once again upon the uncharted field of non-contributory pensions, the end of which is, and must always be, financial disaster.

The situation of the holder of a fellowship is different. He is a young student, making his way at every sacrifice, and gaining on the lower steps of the academic ladder

that experience and training which will one day enable him to mount well to the top. The annual stipend of a university fellowship was fixed at $500 by the Trustees of Columbia University when in 1872 they established the fellowships in letters and in science that were awarded annually for some years. This same amount was adopted by the Johns Hopkins University when it established twenty fellowships in 1876. As fellowships multiplied, both here and elsewhere, $500, or $500 plus the amount of tuition, was pretty generally accepted as an appropriate stipend. What was sufficient in 1872 and in 1876 is not sufficient in 1924. Fellowships of this type should carry a stipend of $1,500, or the Fellows should be supported by loan funds that would give them an available income of that amount. Scholarship and scholars are slowly but steadily coming to their own, and there is no possible reason why either scholarship or scholars should be starved while those whose occupation is with far less valuable and far less important instruments of civilization, are deemed worthy of every comfort and luxury.

The Pulitzer

Prizes

The annual prizes in Journalism and in Letters provided for by the will of the late Joseph Pulitzer have now been in existence for eight years. They have attracted a large measure of public attention and there has been more or less discussion, much of it quite uninformed, as to their value and significance and as to the method of their award. In the first place, it is to be remarked that these prizes are something with which Columbia University, as such, has nothing whatever to do beyond holding and investing Mr. Pulitzer's bequest and applying the income therefrom precisely as his will directs. These prizes are not awarded by the Trustees of Columbia University or by any Faculty or Administrative Board. The author

ity and control of the Advisory Board of the School of Journalism, for which Board provision is also made in Mr. Pulitzer's will, are complete, and that Board is given full discretion to modify any of the provisions relating to the preliminary selection or nomination of candidates for these prizes. The Advisory Board is composed of thirteen members, twelve of whom are experienced journalists of the highest standing drawn from all parts of the United States. The thirteenth member of the Advisory Board is the President of the University. The prizes in Journalism and in Letters are awarded at a stated meeting of the Advisory Board held in the month of April of each year, and are announced shortly thereafter. The Advisory Board have from the beginning complied with Mr. Pulitzer's expressed desire that, in judging between competitors for the several prizes in Journalism, the services of the professors, instructors, and others connected with the School of Journalism shall be availed of as largely as possible. For an examination of the material under consideration in connection with the prizes in Letters and for recommendation as to the awards themselves, the Advisory Board have had the invaluable services of members of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, who have invariably been men of the highest competence and reputation. No pains have been spared by these committees of recommendation to survey the whole field and to submit to the Advisory Board recommendations that had been most carefully considered. Of the seventy decisions made during the past eight years, the Advisory Board have accepted the selections of the appropriate juries or committees of recommendation in sixty instances and have departed from them in but ten instances. Of the ten, eight were recommendations for prizes in Journalism, as to which the members of the Advisory Board must be deemed to

have particular knowledge and special competence. In but two cases have the Advisory Board failed to accept the recommendations of the appropriate jury relative to the award of the prizes in Letters. In all these cases the members of the Advisory Board exercised their own judgment, as they were not only authorized but indeed required to do by the provisions of the foundation upon which this whole scheme of prizes rests. As a general rule, therefore, it may be said that the prizes in Journalism have been awarded by experienced journalists and by them alone, and that the recipients of the prizes in Letters have been selected, in almost every instance, by a committee chosen from the most competent men of letters in the United States. Where matters of taste and judgment so largely enter, it cannot be expected that there will be complete agreement as to the wisdom or correctness of every one of these awards, but at all events they have been made as carefully and as fairly as circumstances have made possible.

The Advisory Board have never felt that this whole scheme of prizes was either the wisest possible or perfect in its administration. They have constantly watched for ways and means to improve the methods of selection and award and to increase the assurance that no meritorious competitor shall be overlooked. To this end the Advisory Board have recently provided that a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, to be named by the President of that Society for the year, shall be added to the committees of recommendation for each of the prizes in Journalism. They have also provided that an Executive Secretary of the Advisory Board be appointed whose sole duty it shall be to secure for the various juries or committees of recommendation the largest possible amount of material from which to select the prize winners. It is important that

the selection of prize winners should not be confined to those who offer themselves, or who are urged by their immediate associates and friends. All relevant material of every sort and kind should pass under the eye of the appropriate jury, if it be at all possible so to order matters. Any system of prizes must, to maintain itself, give assurance that it is administered with open-mindedness and large-mindedness, and that the awards themselves are made in conformity with high standards and with entire absence of any personal, professional, or institutional interest.

The erection and occupation during the year of International House, on Riverside Drive just north of 120th Street, is a notable addition to the provisions New Provision for the comfort and satisfaction of that large for Foreign Students and growing body of foreign students which comes each year to New York, and chiefly to Columbia University, to seek advanced instruction of various sorts and kinds. International House is the outgrowth of the Cosmopolitan Club, established fifteen years ago in order to bring together in one group the students coming to New York from foreign lands. These now number more than 1000, representing 67 nationalities or political jurisdictions. More than one-half of these are in residence at International House.

Foreign students, whether going from America to European universities or coming from Europe, Asia and Africa to American universities, are always at a disadvantage in establishing contacts of a social and personal character that may be of even greater educational value than the formal instruction of which they are in search. The Cosmopolitan Club in the past has accomplished much in this direction, and International House, so admirably planned and equipped, will accomplish much more. The steady, if slow, interpenetration of peoples